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Is the writing on the wall for books?

  • Artigo

ebooks

As we moved in to our new apartment (I mean flat) last weekend, the moving company guys remarked that for a guy who works for a tech company, I have an awful lot of books. It’s true, we (my wife and I) do have a LOT of books. All sorts of books – travel guides, reference books, novels, technical books, photo/coffee table books and frankly they weight a LOT. That’s why the guys who moved us in asked “don’t you use technology, have you never heard of the Internet?”. Clearly the answer to both of those is yes and though I don’t own an ebook reader like the Kindle or an iPad, two posts on the web today made me wonder whether the book is about to decline as a medium.

First up, is a piece about Kindle Outselling iBooks 60 To 1 which isn’t what piqued my interest. It was more that a previously mildly successful author could become more wealthy through ebooks than traditional books. Not really surprising but interesting to see an clear example in action.

Second up is the New York Times bestselling author and marketing guru, Seth Godin vows to never publish traditionally again. I own most of Seth’s books and would count myself as a fan. It’s no surprise to see him take this route given his mantra is built on topics such as distribution, technology and making things viral.

So, do these things add up to the imminent downfall of books? Of course not though they’re both good indicators that the guard is changing from the publishing end of things even if the consumption is still limited to the tech savvy.

Does it mean I’m going to dash out and buy an iPad or Kindle? I doubt it…I can’t bring myself to buy an iPad from a cost/benefit point of view and though I like the idea of the single use efficiency of the Kindle and the bookstore, I just can’t get excited about the device itself.

Am I a luddite? Maybe…but books aren’t going away just yet from the world at large or the Clayton household…however, the resistance to digital has taken a few body blows for me personally over the last few weeks so maybe I’ll change my tune before Christmas.

[update] Rory does a much better job at diving in to the details than I did

Comments

  • Anonymous
    August 22, 2010
    Sounds like a familiar problem - we had to do a rather ruthless cull of books at our last move. I do have an iPad, and I'm experimenting on myself by setting a goal of buying only e-books from now on.  I'm trying to stick with the Times iPad app and the iPad edition of Wired as well. Apple don't have every book I want, so I've got the Kindle app installed to take care of that. Luckily, my wife has different reading tastes from me, so there's no issue with how to 'lend' an e-book to someone else, but I can see that as an issue that will need attention.  There's no way I'm paying twice to put my copy on somebody elses' reading device. Still need a few more magazine publishers to get a handle on e-publishing as some of them charge MORE for a digital copy than they do for the print edition, which is clearly just madness.

  • Anonymous
    August 22, 2010
    I think there's a massive area between 'luddite' and 'geek'.  I have an iPhone, iPad, numerous computers, PS3 etc, all of which can stream music from Spotify, from my mp3 collection on NAS storage etc, but I still have over a thousand CDs and a large vinyl collection which I dip into regularly.  Same with books.  I think the Kindle/iPad can co-exist with traditional printed media.